Sandra L. Richards
Sandra L. Richards is Professor of African American Studies and Theatre and holds a courtesy appointment in Performance Studies at Northwestern University. She obtained a Ph.D. from Stanford University and a B.A. from Brown University. Her current research focuses on tourism to slave sites in the Black Atlantic. Some of that research has been published in Theatre Journal (December 2005); Madison and Hamera, eds., The Sage Handbook of Performance Studies (2005); Ashworth and Hartmann, eds., Horror and Human Tragedy Revisited: The Management of Sites of Atrocities for Tourism (2005); and Assaph. Section C, Studies in Theatre (forthcoming).
With a background in directing, Richards has also sought to identify theatre aesthetics linking African diaspora playwrights such as August Wilson, Ntozake Shange, Dennis Scott, or D’janet Sears with African playwrights such as Femi Osofisan, Ama Ata Aidoo, or Wole Soyinka. Research in this area has resulted in such essays as “Yoruba Gods on the American Stage: August Wilson’s Joe Turner’s Come and Gone” in Conteh-Morgan and Olaniyan, eds., African Drama and Performance (2004) and “Under the Trickster’s Sign: Toward a Reading of Ntozake Shange and Femi Osofisan” in Reinelt and Roach, eds., Critical Theory and Performance (1992). Richards is also the author of Ancient Songs Set Ablaze: The Theatre of Femi Osofisan (1996).